In America, Memorial Day is just ahead – or Decoration Day, if you’re a real old-timer, a day for decorating the graves of the Civil War dead. The songs many of those soldiers marched to are still known today – “The Yellow Rose Of Texas”, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”, “Dixie”. But this one belongs in a category all its own:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored...
Henry Steele Commager called it “the one great song to come out of the Civil War, the one great song ever written in America”.
Whether or not thatÂ’s true, most of us understand it has a depth and a power beyond most formal national songs. . . .
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